So I'm combing google images after looking at Andrews post for his 77 200SX for sale, I wanted to see what the Japanese bumpers looked like on the car. It's been so long since I had seen a photo. So I get about 20 photos down and come across this....

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It's Don's 200SX ( with stock bumpers) and The Bronze....before it was The Bronze! This photo was taken at my fathers place sometime before 2001, because that's when the restoration started. There are some notable club members in the shot, but it's a photo I've never seen before. It's interesting what pictures might be out there. This was how the car was built in 1971, until I started the restoration in 2001. At this point I believe I would have only put a motor in it, done the brakes and put new rubber on the car.

And I'd forgotten how low the car was on 13" wheels!

Anyways, I don't know who took this photo and posted it on th internet somewhere, but happy Flashback Friday!

I was asked to post some photos on the wiring harness tuck I did on the Bronze back when I did the build. I really liked the work I did then, especially in the engine bay itself. After 15 years, there have been no faults with the location of the harness or the execution of the layout and hardware used. When I did the build, my digital camera gave up the ghost near the end, and the wiring harness was one of the last things done. So this is a collection of photos complete out of any time line and pieced together this morning- some taken out of my build thread because I can't find the originals, some taken out of other project and show threads, and some taken a few minutes ago out in the garage. So if things are changing all over the place, don't worry, i was just documenting the wiring harness install.

One area I was not impressed with in this build, but I never went back into it, was the wire routing around the fuse box itself. It is functional, and has worked no problem, but it never looked very good in the area. After one foot in any direction, it looks great and everything is clean and tidy, but right at the box, well not so good. As noted, I did add a secondary fuse box as the original would not allow for the extra EFI feed points that were added.

To start with, here is the route of the harness.

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The fuse box was relocated to the inner kick panel area of the car to keep it clean and dry. The chassis harness for the front of the car exited out the kick panel in three connectors into the rear side of the wheel well. These connectors are basic electrical hardware connectors, complete with a rubber gland nut that squeezes down on the wires making a water tight seal. I believe these are used for home wiring where a wire needs to pass through sheet metal siding outdoors. The yellow arrows indicate where the wiring harness goes through the bulkhead gland nuts.

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The engine bay harness splits off and follows my brake line plumbing (also kept out of the engine compartment) down the inner side of the fender well, under the frame rail and back up to the engine under the stock filter location, here it split forwards to the alternator, oil pressure switch, temperature sensor and distributor, and rearwards to the starter.

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The rest of the harness continued from the inner fender, along the top fender "rail", down into the engine bay for a very short distance, then out in front of the rad support above the headlights, across the car, back into the engine bay for a short distance above the headlights and into the LH inner fender for the last fender marker lights and the coil wires. And no, I did not run the three wires from the coil to the distributor through the engine bay - which would have been very easy. I ran them backwards though the entire harness to the RH fender well and up under the engine to the distributor from the bottom of the engine.

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Lastly, the component missing is the wiper wiring. This I ran from the fuse box, joined the dash harness and exited out into the cowl vert and then through the fire wall right above the wiper motor.

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It made the installation very clean - especially when carbureted.

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When the EFI was installed, it still made for a neat set up. The EFI harness poked through the fire wall just above the starter in a similar gland type connector, the ECU hung just under the glove box area.

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The funny thing is that for all this effort, very few people in 17 years have ever commented about the lack of visible wiring. When the car was carbureated and it was really apparent that this was a bare engine bay, it was Rob who posted at some point to someone's comment that there was nothing special about a photo of this engine compartment. Rob's comment was that there was an incredible amount of work spent on what you don't see (no wiring, no brake lines, no extra plumbing at all). Thanks Rob, I always appreciated that comment. Once the car went EFI, there was just simply more hardware on the engine and things got busy. With the addition of the oil cooler and bigger rad, it didn't help with the bussiness, but still most of the wiring remained as hidden as possible. What really helps is that this lack of wiring around does make cleaning the engine bay easier. I do put many miles on this car - it's no trailer queen. Consequently, it gets dirty, and when I do clean it I appreciate the effort I spent over the years on keeping as much out of the engine bay as possible.

I hope that helps you guys asking about the engine bay harness tuck I did on the Bronze.

You read the light the whole thread - wow! No wonder it's been three days between these posts

Thanks for the kind words. The actual restoration was covered not in this thread, but in the Gallery that used to be part of this site. The Gallery thread on my car, Brads car and a few others were extremely detailed photo threads. Unfortunately through no faul of anyone's, the caller was lost at the stroke of a key in a site back up one night in 2005 or 2006. It was a shame - but I'm glad I ran a paralle thread so that some of it was documented. But the whole build wasn't actually here, there are side threads like the EFI. It's thread and other related stuff that happened to the car in battle. I've been itching to do something again though, it's dangerous!